1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to remote management of femtocells in hybrid wireless networks, which include macro cells, pico cells and femtocells with CSG and OSG.
2. Description of the Related Art
Service providers are preparing for mass deployment of broadband wireless systems, such as, Mobile WiMAX or LTE (long-term evolution). In urban areas, macro base stations (BS) may cover a large area, but due to penetration loss and shadings from buildings, plural pico BSs and femto BSs need to be deployed. FIG. 1 shows an example of a hybrid wireless network that includes macro, pico and femto BSs altogether. Hereafter, we call areas covered by macro BS, pico BS and femto BS as macro cell, pico cell and femtocell, respectively. Even though FIG. 1 shows a Remote Management System (RMS) controlling the femtocells, pico cells and macro cells, the environment for the proposed method can be femtocells only, or pico cells only, or macro cells only, or any combination of femto, pico and macro cells.
Because the number of pico cells and femtocells is expected to be large, operators are expecting easy installation and maintenance to avoid high operation expenses. The RMS configures several parameters at the stages of network planning, deployment, and optimizations. Network planning includes neighbor cell list addition, hardware (HW) configuration, and capacity expansion. Network deployment is about self-locating and self-configuring, which are necessary for plug-and-play HW. Network optimization is the key area that needs a great many algorithms for radio parameter optimization, handover parameter optimization, interference control, and QoS (Quality of Service) parameter optimization.